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Consent to search for a person did not permit seizure of baggie in a shoe in a closet as plain view

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant's consent to search for his brother in the house did not support the finding of drugs and crack that were secreted. Here, the court recognized that secreting money in a "less secure neighborhood" was indicative of nothing. State v. Riley, 2008 Ohio 2896, 2008 Ohio App. LEXIS 2406 (2d Dist. June 13, 2008): [*P33] Even if Officer Jones was properly engaged in a search for firearms when he looked in the closet, his testimony that he saw what appeared to be a tennis shoe, but "not ... real clearly," with a plastic baggie partially out of the shoe, falls short of establishing that the incriminating character of the object was immediately apparent to him. He did not testify that he observed the crack cocaine in the baggie before he retrieved the baggie from the shoe...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on June 17, 2008 (boomark / email).